


Golden Slumber

by gypsiangel



Series: Whisper of Sound [1]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, Gen, Kidnapping, Maybe a little ooc for Reid, Original Character - Freeform, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-18
Updated: 2014-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-26 03:46:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 21,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2636801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gypsiangel/pseuds/gypsiangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Are you two romantically involved,” Rossi asked, watching the young man’s face carefully. A hint of a blush rose in his cheeks as he shook his head. They weren’t, but that didn’t mean that Reid didn’t want something more.<br/>“No. She’s too important.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! :) This is one of my first CM fanfics, so I hope it doesn't suck too bad for my first story on the archive. Alice is a character of mine that I've had floating around for a while and she's one of my favorites, so she might turn up in any number of different fics. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read my stuff... Any feedback is welcome, but it'd be cool to keep the really negative stuff away.

 

*~*~*

          _“You’re gonna die kid, and it ain’t gonna be pretty or easy. You’re gonna die messy and loud and slow.”_

           Alice Butler didn’t pay any attention to the malicious whisper that ghosted across her cheek as she stepped through the open doorway of her apartment building and out into the still air of the morning. She knew better than to give into the urge to flinch or to argue. Acknowledging them in any way was a bad thing, especially when they weren’t the warm and fuzzy types. This one followed her for an entire city block before getting disgusted and filtering back to the alleyway between her apartment building and the next where he could find someone else to harass. Not that everyone could see him.

          The moment she felt the chill in the air fade out, she let out a breath and allowed herself the luxury of shuddering and hunching deeper into her thick winter coat and scarf. Some mornings it was harder than others to pretend that they weren’t there. There was a thin line between reality and _other_ , and even though she’d gotten very good at discerning between the two, there were still moments where she slipped and made a mistake.

          Icy fingers fumbled in her pocket and pulled out her iPod, going through the motions of plugging in her headphones and putting on the playlist that got her through her bus commute. She wasn’t feeling very well this morning, her head felt foggy and there was an uneasy feeling settled in her chest. The dark circus/cabaret sound of Vermillion Lies came over the headphones, the familiar tones easing a little of her discomfort. She listened to a huge variety of music, ranging from very old classic country to German trance and obscure and strange pagan folk music. Right at the moment, she needed something dark and strange. It fit her mood very well.

          As soon as she hit the block where she worked, she slipped into the early morning crowd, easily avoiding eye contact with the living and the dead alike. The moment she was inside the small coffee shop, she breathed a sigh of relief and went into the small back office to take off her coat, leaving her thick sweater, fingerless gloves, and knit hat on for a little while longer. It was much warmer inside, but there was a deep chill that refused to leave. Alice figured that she could probably sit right in front of a raging furnace and still be freezing.

          She was the first one in, as if usually was on Mondays, and she went through the motions of opening, plugging in her iPod to the overhead speakers and setting it up to an internet radio station that continued her music theme. She figured that her early crowd wouldn’t mind. If they did, they wouldn’t say anything. Alice wasn’t the type to invite confrontation, her demeanor quiet and unassuming. She was on the floor by herself until noon, then her boss, Renee would be in and she knew that the older woman actually liked hearing the different kinds of music she came up with.

          The moment she flipped the sign to open, her regulars came in and she became too busy to dwell on the strange feeling that was steadily worsening. Around one, she slipped over to a table by the window for her break, cradling a hot cup of coffee between her fingers, which had yet to thaw out. She propped her book open with one of the heavy sugar dispensers and tried to lose herself in the words for a few minutes. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard someone clear their throat.

          “Hey, Allie, how’s tricks?” Shoulders relaxing as she recognized one of her few friends, she grinned as he took the seat across from her.

          “Hey, Spence. I thought you were out of town for a few more days.” She glanced around the small café, catching Renee’s approving eye. The blonde waggled her eyebrows and gestured for Alice to take a long break. Well, that made her feel a little bit better that her companion was actually sitting there. The way she was feeling today, there was a bit of paranoia when she spoke to anyone.

          “We finished early and Hotch gave us a couple days to decompress before going back in.” Spencer Reid was one of her few friends that she’d carried with her when she’d moved from Vegas to DC, one outsider keeping in contact with another. They’d been neighbors for the first ten years of their lives, two houses down. Both undersized and bullied for being different, the two had banded together first out of necessity, then because they clicked in a way that neither one did with others. He was the first one that knew about her penchant for seeing the dead, and she was the first one to know about his mother’s schizophrenia.

          They knew things about each other that no one else could ever dream of understanding. She’d cried buckets when he’d gone to college without her, but he’d kept his promise to write and call. When she’d run away from home when she was fifteen, unable to stay with her abusive stepfather and oblivious mother, Spencer had paid for her ticket to DC where he’d been studying at the FBI academy, then he’d found her a place to stay and a job despite the fact that she wasn’t exactly legal to be living on her own. He’d used some of the hard won contacts he’d made in the bureau to make sure she didn’t have to go back and that she didn’t have to go into the foster care system.

          In return, she finished high school with high marks and had enrolled in tech school the moment she graduated. Now that she was twenty-one, she was nearly finished with her schooling and it was almost time to find a real job. It would be nice to not have to work two jobs to keep her head above water. “Something’s bothering you,” he commented after a long silence where they both sipped at their coffee. She wasn’t exactly the most vocal of people, but not usually this bad with him.

          Her lips twisted wryly as she raised her eyes to meet his. He felt the usual spike of awareness when he looked into the unusual golden green, but he frowned at the troubled furrow of her brow under the knit hat she’d pulled down over her red-gold curls. “I just had a rotten morning,” she confessed quietly. “Ran into a not so nice gentleman that had an ominous prediction for me. It’s not really going away as easy as usual.”

          “Want to talk about it?”

          “Not really. You know how they can be. I ignored it and kept walking.” Ah, so it had been one of _those_ encounters. The living challenged, as he’d dubbed them when they were kids, were sometimes worse bullies than the living.

          “What do you think about pizza and beer tonight? Morgan, Garcia, and Prentiss are trying to get me to go out clubbing and I need an excuse to not go.” Her smile reached her eyes this time and he felt himself warming a little. The crush he’d had on her for forever had been getting worse. As his best friend that had actually known him from the beginning, he didn’t have to hide anything from her. The barrier he kept up around everyone else wasn’t necessary with Alice. She was more isolated than he was, which worried him sometimes, but he understood it.

          “That sounds awesome. Pub or home?” She shivered a little and he frowned. It was warmer than normal in the café and she was wearing a thick brown and green sweater, hat, and gloves that covered all but her fingertips.

          “Pub, then home?” He reached out a tentative hand to touch her hand, drawn in by the delicate pale. “Are you sure you’re okay, Al? I’m sure Renee will be okay with you going home early. I can walk you home.”

          “I’m good, Spence, really. I just feel kinda strange. It’ll be okay.” She squeezed his fingers and let go, gathering her cup before reaching over to kiss his cheek. “I’ve gotta get back to work. I’m outta here by five. Meet at my place or yours?”

          “I’ll swing by yours. Is the cave dweller gonna be home?”

          “When is he ever gone?” She rolled her eyes at the mention of her roommate, a barrel chested gay man that had decided from day one that Alice was the sister he’d never had. He was nice enough, but a little clingy for her tastes. She wasn’t much for conversation on a good day, but he always seemed to want to talk and hang out. She’d been living there for almost six months and she was hoping to find a better place without a roommate when she finished school and got a real job.

          “Good point. Seven thirty good?” He stood up and couldn’t resist pulling her in for a brief hug.

          “Sounds like a plan. I’ll be ready. Keep yourself out of trouble, mister, and I’ll see you in a few hours.” Then she was back to work and he was going back outside into the crisp air. His stomach felt funny and he wondered if she had any idea how much his feelings for her had changed. He hadn’t even realized exactly how much his feelings had changed until he’d been in the middle of the desert, searching through the property of a mentally disturbed woman, looking for a connection to a serial killer. He’d been bantering back and forth with Prentiss, talking about how the endorphins released by certain foods were similar to the endorphins released by being in love, and the thought had hit him out of nowhere. When he thought of love, he thought of Alice.

          He could pull her face to the front of his mind at any time, the soft curves and gentle lines etched into his memory better than his own. When the job seemed to be too much he thought about their conversations, going over every word as if it was happening all over again, focusing on the warm feeling of sitting next to her on the couch or across from her at their favorite diner. He thought about the many times she’d fallen asleep next to him, her petite frame settling into him as if she’d been created just for that purpose. Spencer had fought the urge to tell her how he felt for a long time, not wanting to change the dynamic of their friendship. If she didn’t feel the same, he’d be crushed. And even if she did feel the same and they actually had a chance of being together, then later it didn’t work out, he’d be even more crushed. Alice was even pricklier than he was about trust- she had more secrets to hide, worse than a schizophrenic mother and a sad childhood riddled with bullies.

          She trusted _him,_ and he was sure that was it. He hadn’t told anyone about her, and he wasn’t sure if he actually could if he wanted to. Alice was his safe place that was separate from all the horrible stuff he saw every day; his safe place away from the BAU and the scary places his extraordinary mind took him even by accident. He rubbed at his forehead absently, not quite sure what he should do now that he’d come to the definite conclusion that he wanted his best friend as more than a friend.

 

*~*~*

          Alice greeted him from the top of the stairs outside of her apartment, waving from her perch on the ledge just to the side of the landing. Her legs dangled over the side, kicking at the off white plaster gently with the heels of her calf-high leather boots. The forest green tights she wore matched the green, brown, and orange plaid skirt and the button down cream colored blouse, the colors all blending into a look that was pure Alice. She was wearing the same wool cap as earlier, the gold and brown pattern setting prettily over a couple of short, low pigtails.

          “Thank the gods you’re here, Spencer. I thought I might actually have to burn the place down if I had to sit here any longer.”

          He took her bag and held it while she slipped into her coat and scarf. “That bad, huh?”

          “Dude, he is seriously starting to bug. How hard is it to understand that I am not the type to sit and have long conversations about nothing? There was only so much I could do and my room is starting to bug me too, so I just came out here to wait.”

          “It’s the start of winter, which is historically when most restlessness starts. Last year they did a study about the so-called cabin fever…” Alice felt something tight ease in her chest as she listened to her friend start rambling. Her shoulders relaxed as they navigated the stairs and slipped out onto the street.

          _“Your friend isn’t going to save you, honey. He’ll die too- choking on his own blood.”_ She stepped closer to Spencer, a shudder of cold unease trickling through her at the close proximity of the specter. _“I know you can see me, bitch, so stop pretending.”_

          “Allie?” The note of concern in Spencer’s voice made her duck her head and quicken her steps. He easily sped up his gait to keep up with her, having fallen into the old habit of slowing his pace considerably so that she never had to rush to keep up. When they were out of her block, she stopped suddenly, and closed her eyes, moving to lean against the nearest building, bending in half to rest her forehead against the top of her knees.

          “Alice, talk to me.” His tone was a little sharp with concern and she flinched a little, knowing that she was going to have to explain or he wasn’t going to leave it alone.

          “Let’s get to Gionni’s, then I’ll explain,” she said, raising back up so that she could look into his worried face. He looked like he was going to argue, so she added, “I’m freezing, Spence, and I really need that beer.”

          “All right,” he sighed, but he took her hand, pulled her away from the building and into a tight embrace. “I don’t have to tell you that you’re scaring me.”

          “Let’s go,” she said, but only pulled away far enough so that they could start walking again. She kept her arm around his waist and he kept his around her shoulders, the two huddling together against the cold wind that was cutting through the already dark streets. It got dark so early, and Alice hated it. Idly she wondered what it would be like to go to Florida where it stayed relatively warm and sunny year round. But then you had to contend with humidity and hurricanes. California might be nice. But then there was smog and earthquakes.

          Once they were inside the pizza place, which they’d decided was the better option for pizza than the neighborhood pub that she’d suggested initially, they placed the order for their shared garlic vegetarian deluxe and a pitcher of hard cider. Alice had changed her mind about the beer, knowing that it was cheaper to buy it by the pitcher and that Spencer wasn’t a big fan of beer in general. After they claimed their table in the back corner, the pitcher and glasses arranged in the middle, she was even more reluctant to tell her friend about what was scaring her so badly.

          Spencer was her oldest friend- her only close friend really- and he had a tendency to be overprotective. He was older than she was by about two years, and light years ahead in the intellect and ‘real world’ experience. He had to deal with people on a deep level that she never wanted to. He saw the darkest aspects of the human race on a daily basis and the very nature of his mind made it impossible for him to leave it behind. She didn’t want to give him any more reason to be paranoid that something bad was going to happen to her.

          “Alice, please.” It was the quiet plea in his voice that made her close her eyes again and start telling him about the shade that haunted the alleyway just outside her brownstone. Her voice was low and near monotone as she relayed the man’s appearance- average height, weight, brown hair a little on the shaggy side, black, hollow eyes, and a bloody face that had obviously taken a hit with something heavy.

          “It’s been getting worse,” she confessed finally. “This morning he told me I was going to die screaming. Then tonight when we walked past him, he said that you…” Her voice broke and Spencer squeezed her hand tightly.

          She cleared her throat and tremulously tried again, “He said that you weren’t going to save me. He said that you’re going to die choking on your own blood.”

          “He can’t actually hurt you, Allie,” Spencer reminded her gently. “He doesn’t have any kind of substance, he doesn’t have any kind of influence over the physical world. He’s trying to get under your skin.”

          “But what if he’s right?” Her eyes were shining with tears in the dim lighting of the small pizzeria. Her lip quivered and her hands trembled under his. “What if… what if he really does know something that we don’t? I might see them, Spencer, but I don’t know exactly what they can do or see. What if he’s tied in deeper to the universe, what if he…”

          Their order was called out and she slipped out of the booth to go gather the pizza and try to pull herself back together. Spencer frowned as he processed her words. When she slid back in across from him and they both had a slice of the pie, he blurted, “I want you to move in with me.”

          Her eyebrows disappeared into the low brim of her wool cap and she dropped her food back onto her plate. “What? Spencer, you live in a one bedroom about five blocks away from my jobs.”

          “I’ll find another place with two bedrooms. I talked to Hotch and Garcia about having you intern with her once you graduate anyway and they’re all for it as long as you pass the FBI background checks and requirements. With my recommendation, it’s yours. It’ll pay more than what you’re making now at Renee’s, and after you’re done with the internship, there’s an open full time position in IT.”

          He stopped when he saw the look of shock on her face. Her mouth was hanging open a little and her eyes were wide as she studied his face. “How long have you been planning to ask me this?”

          “A while,” he confessed. “Alice, I…”

          “Pretty Boy!” A happily surprised voice cut through the dim interior and Spencer froze, his words dying in his throat as Morgan, Garcia, and Prentiss descended on their table. “I didn’t think this was your neighborhood.”

          Alice suddenly had a deer in the headlights look and Spencer wanted to curse. He’d been about to come clean about his feelings but it was too late now. His friend was going to try to escape and he’d be left with insanely curious coworkers that had absolutely no business butting into his life outside of work. “It’s not,” he said, trying to keep from sounding too curt. “Guys, this is my friend, Alice. Alice, these are my team members Derek Morgan, Penelope Garcia, and Emily Prentiss.”

“Alice? Oooh, you’re the one that our boy’s been campaigning to intern with me,” Garcia clapped her hands in glee, then offered the younger girl a hand to shake. “Nice to meet you.”

          “Yeah,” Alice answered, “Nice to meet you guys. I- I need to go. We’ll talk later, Spencer.” With that, she slipped out of the booth and grabbed her bag and coat without saying anything else. He could see by the look on her face that she was fighting an anxiety spike, so he didn’t try to stop her.

          “Is she all right?” Prentiss asked, slipping into the booth across from Spencer that Alice had just vacated.

          “Social anxiety,” Spencer explained quietly, giving into the urge to rub at the headache that had blossomed at his left temple.

          “Sorry we ran your date off, man,” Morgan said, but gestured for him to move over. Garcia took the seat next to Prentiss.

          “It’s okay, you guys didn’t know.”

          “What’s up, sweet-cheeks?” Garcia asked, her heavily mascaraed eyes taking in the unhappy expression he wore a little too well. “We interrupted something big, didn’t we?”

          “I just asked her to move in with me,” he blurted, then closed his mouth with a click of teeth. Now why the hell did he tell them that? He’d kept Alice away from his work life for so long that it had become second nature to keep his friend secret. Maybe it was because he’d already started the process of integrating the two sides by asking for Alice to intern with Garcia in the first place. Eventually it would have come together, he just hadn’t wanted it to happen this way.

          “What? Reid, I had no idea you were even dating someone, let alone planning to live with her,” Prentiss picked an olive off the abandoned pizza absently.

          “We’re not dating,” their youngest member barely kept from snapping at them. “I’ve known her since we were kids. Her living situation isn’t the greatest and I wanted her to be safe.”

          “Easy, kid,” Morgan soothed, bumping shoulders with him. “We’re not trying to pry.”

          “That’s what it feels like.” Spencer felt like an ass and he wanted to go find Alice, knowing that she didn’t want to go home, but wouldn’t really know a warm place to go and hang out. “I’m sorry, guys, but I need to go find her.”

          “Sure,” Morgan said and got out of the booth. “Is she in some kind of danger? Is there something we can do to help?”

          “I don’t know,” Spencer answered honestly. “I just need to find her. Go ahead and finish off the pizza and cider, it’s pretty good.” With that, he was gone, leaving behind a collective sense of worry in his group of colleagues.

*~*~*


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short, short, short! I'm in the process of transferring my documents from one laptop to another, so everything seems kinda choppy and weird. Lol, I hope this story isn't as awkward to you guys as it seems to me. :D As always, feedback is more than welcome and *constructive* criticism is good.

 

 

*~*~*

          The moment Alice was outside, she started walking toward the park, definitely not ready to go home and not wanting to be around people. It was so cold she was shivering and her feet were like blocks of ice, but she wanted to hear the sound of the fountain. Her hands curled in her pockets as she thought about Spencer’s offer. Why was it such a bad thing? He was barely home so she’d have the place to herself most of the time. She trusted him more than she would a random roommate, which is what she would end up with if and when she left her current apartment, and he knew her enough not to be offended if she was in a mood and didn’t talk to him for a couple days at a time. Besides, there was a tiny, warm little bit of her that grew a little warmer at the thought of falling asleep next to him and knowing that she didn't have to leave in the morning.

          _“Pretty thing,”_ the voice came out of the shadows and Alice felt the burn of tears at the back of her throat. Couldn’t they leave her alone for just a few minutes? They were everywhere. Always looking, always following, always talking. _“Such a shame. Shame, shame, shame.”_

“What?! What is a shame?” Suddenly unable to keep herself from responding, Alice nearly shouted at the pale homeless woman that shuffled out of the darkness on the other side of the fountain. “Shame that I can see you? That I can hear you? Fuck! Why can’t you just leave me alone!?”

          _“Pretty thing,”_ the woman repeated, clucking her tongue and shaking her head sadly. The black hollows where her eyes should have been were deep pits in a sagging face. _“Should have stayed with your young man. The beast is coming for you, lovey.”_

          “Fine,” Alice snapped, throwing her hands up. “Let him come. I’ve heard this all before, lady. I know I’m going to die slow and screaming. It’s going to hurt. I’ve heard all about it, so you can go right back where you came from.”

          She turned on her heel to go back the way she came and ran nose-to-chest with a tall back shadow. Bulky arms went around her when she tried to jerk back. Her hat tumbled off, leaving her red-gold hair shining in the dim light. A gloved hand cupped her cheek, caressing the soft skin almost reverently. “I’ve been waiting for you.” The words were a deep rumble and she could feel the vibrations from where she was pressed so tightly against him. “I knew you’d come.”

          _“Shame, shame, shame.”_

*~*~*

          She wasn’t at her apartment and her roommate hadn’t seen her. Any calls to her cell phone went straight to voicemail, texts were ignored, and no one around her building had seen her. It was nearing midnight before Spencer gave up and went home. Worry churning in his gut, he hadn’t been able to sleep very well. Uncharacteristically, he was up and filling a go cup with coffee when the sun was just barely coming up over the horizon. There were very few things that could drag him out of bed early on a day off.

          He got a call from Alice’s boss, Renee, at seven asking if he knew where she was. Apparently no one had opened the café. That wasn’t like Alice to abandon her duties. She took her job seriously, if only because she was almost obsessive about her responsibilities and financially couldn't afford to lose any hours. She’d never not just show up, and he had seen her have a near anxiety attack over having to call in before. He tried her phone again. It rang and rang and rang, then finally went to voicemail. He left his apartment and knocked on her door again, waking up her roommate for the second time in two days. The gruff man had snapped that he hadn’t seen her and that he should try checking at her FBI friend’s place. Jaw clenched, Spencer barely kept the irritation at bay.

          Apparently Alice was just as good at keeping him separate. He retraced their steps back to the pizzeria, asking people randomly if they’d seen her. Nothing. He checked the bookstore she frequented and was told that she hadn’t been in for nearly a week. Finally going through the pathways in the park, his stomach hurting from nerves, he found her hat in front of her fountain.

          He pulled his cell phone out and called his boss. “Hotch, I’m sorry to interrupt your… I need some help.”

*~*~*

          “Are you sure she’s missing?” Spencer glared at Morgan from across the conference table.

          “How long have you known me, Morgan? Am I the type to freak out and call everyone in for nothing?”

          “Ease down, kid, it’s a valid question,” Rossi said sternly. “Most missing person reports are made prematurely.”

          “I know the statistics, Rossi. And I know that Alice wouldn’t drop off without taking any of her possessions or at least letting me know.”

          “Would she notify anyone else?”

          “No.” Spencer said immediately, then amended, “Maybe she’d tell her boss, Renee, but I’m the only one she…” He swallowed hard and his fingers clenched around the knit hat he still carried with him.

          “You saw her last night around seven, correct,” Hotch asked and not without sympathy. “Walk us through what happened and why you think she might be in danger.”

          “Something had been bothering her,” he started, taking a deep breath. He couldn’t tell them the truth of it, that she’d been getting threats from a dead man, but he couldn’t tell them that it was an actual person. He thought fast. “She’s been getting harassed by someone outside her building and she was unnerved by it.” That wasn’t exactly a lie and it was vague enough that he could play it off as her not telling him the entire truth of it.

          “Did she say what he looked like?”

          Spencer shook his head, but answered, “Brown, brown, average height, average weight, white. He could be a million other people in the city. She’s good at ignoring harassment, so I’m not surprised that she didn’t have a lot of details.”

          “Your friend has to evade harassment a lot?” Prentiss raised her eyebrows.

          “She was bullied just as much as I was when we were kids. The best way to deal with it was always to ignore it as much as possible. She’s a quiet, pretty young woman that’s small of stature and she lives in a rougher area. She’s a prime target. That’s why I wanted her to move in with me. I brought it up last night before you guys interrupted.”

          “Are you two romantically involved,” Rossi asked, watching the young man’s face carefully. A hint of a blush rose in his cheeks as he shook his head. They weren’t, but that didn’t mean that Reid didn’t want something more.

          “No. She’s too important.” The simple answer made JJ and Garcia’s eyes soften and Prentiss’s smile was indulging.

          “Maybe she knew that you had more than friendly feelings for her and she bolted,” Morgan pointed out. He held his hands out at Spencer’s narrowed gaze. “I had to bring it up, man. We have to look at all angles and it’d be foolish to just jump to conclusions.”

          “If that was the case, she would have just avoided me for a few days. That wouldn’t have caused her to skip out on her jobs. I got a call from the diner she worked… works… at. The manager was looking for her. She didn’t show up for her shift and she hadn’t called.”

          “You’re on her emergency contact list?” JJ asked.

          “Yes. I’m actually the only one on her contact list. If they can’t get a hold of me, I insisted on her putting Hotch’s number down. She doesn’t have any other family that she keeps in contact with. Her stepfather is a bastard and her mother isn’t much better.”

          “Okay, we need to go back to the beginning,” Hotch said after Spencer’s words sank in. “Reid, I need for you to detail everything you know about Alice’s life- work and class schedule, hobbies and the routes she takes to get from one to the other. I need a list of everyone she might know or come in contact with. Garcia, I need you to do a full background on Alice and any names Spencer can come up with, and JJ, I’d like for you to help her. Morgan and Prentiss, I want you to go to the park where Reid found the hat.”

          “Thank you,” Spencer muttered, closing his eyes briefly. “You guys didn’t have to believe me or take me seriously. I- Other than my mom, Alice is my only...”

          “You said it, kid,” Morgan nudged him with his elbow. “You’re not the type to freak out and call us all in over nothing. We’ll find her.”

*~*~*


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

*~*~*

          It was quiet and dark when she woke up, her head feeling like it was going to split in half. Her mouth was dry, and when she worked her mouth to try and get some sort of moisture, she realized that there was a cloth of some sort wrapped around her head and stuffed between her teeth. Confusion was first, why the hell is… what’s going on? Where was she? When she tried to open her eyes everything was cloudy, her vision blurry to the point of only being able to see vague shapes. Her head spun and she hoped that she wouldn’t throw up.

          When she was ten, she’d snuck into her mother’s liquor cabinet to see what the fuss was all about. The adults drank it like it was water, so it couldn’t have been too bad, right? She had gotten so sick that she had made it a point not to drink hard alcohol at all. Beer and wine were different, they were slower and they didn’t have the burn that the other did. This was what that had felt like, dizzy and spinning and out of focus. Sick.

          She must have made a noise because after she screwed her eyes back shut, she heard rustling, then felt a warm hand touch her face. Jerking away, she moaned at the pain that rocketed down her spine. “Shhh, little one,” a voice murmured and she was being picked up and moved. Stomach lurching, she tried to push and fight against the hands that cradled her gently, but her arms didn’t want to work. She couldn’t feel her arms or her legs, they were numb and tingling as if she’d been lying still for too long. Alarm shot through her and she could feel her breathing start to hitch.

          “Hush, baby, it’s all right. You’re okay, I’ve got you.” She was cradled against a broad chest and nestled into a warm lap as the man carrying her sat down in a chair near a window. The dim light was a little stronger here, she could see it through her eyelids that she was too scared to open. His hand stroked her hair away from her face tenderly, calluses snagging on the soft skin at her temple. “I’ve got you. I’m sorry we have to be so quiet. My mother isn’t doing well. I wanted to wait until she was gone to bring you home, but when I saw you…” His voice trailed off and Alice felt desperate tears well up behind her eyes. They were warm as they slid down her cheeks.

          “Don’t cry, darling,” he murmured and Alice whimpered as she felt his lips against her cheeks, kissing the tears away. “It’s all right. Mother has had a very long life and she’s ready to go. You know how mothers are, don’t you? They meddle and even though their hearts are in the right place, they get in the way. Soon, I won’t have to hide you.”

          _Oh, God. He’s insane. I’m going to die here._ She didn’t want to die. She wasn’t scared of it… she knew there was something else beyond the mortal body. Spencer’s face came to her, the features always more pretty than handsome, and she cried harder, turning her face away from the hand stroking her, but closer into the man’s chest. He smelled like sawdust and something else… cinnamon. He smelled like cinnamon. Spencer always smelled like books, coffee, and sandalwood soap.

          Her last thought before she fell back into the merciful void was that she wasn’t going to know what it was like to tell him she loved him.

*~*~*

          “Your girl is like a freaking ghost, man.” Morgan tossed the interview notes he’d gathered from her roommate, teachers, employers and coworkers. “It’s like she’s there but no one really knows her. Two of her teachers had no idea she hadn’t been in class for three days.”

          Spencer’s shoulders hunched and he cradled his coffee cup closer to his chest. “She does it on purpose, Morgan. She blends into the background out of self-preservation. It was something that I used to envy her for. I can’t blend in no matter what I do and it caused me a lot of trouble especially when I got to high school.”

          “I can understand why you would want to blend in, kid,” Rossi said, then asked, “But why would Alice need to go to such extremes to fly under the radar? Her records show that she was above average in her studies, not quite a four point average, but close. Her attendance was fair and she did just enough after school activities to get into a good college.”

          Garcia saved Spencer the necessity of answering. “I have her hospital records. She was in the emergency room twelve times by the time she was ten.” Her gaze was sympathetic as she looked at Spencer over the edge of her laptop, which she’d brought into the conference room with her. “Broken bones, sprains, bruises and cuts. When she was five, there was a severe head injury where the base of her skull had been cracked. They had to do surgery to reduce swelling.”

          “That’s one of the reasons she didn’t want attention,” Spencer told them quietly, slowly looking at the teammates that had gathered back to share what they’d gathered. “She used to hide over at my house when it got really bad. My mom didn’t even notice most of the time as long as we pretended that Alice had come over early for breakfast and cartoons. Then I got accepted into college early and I wasn’t there…”

          Hotch came into the room in time to hear the last and briefly touched a hand to Spencer’s shoulder before taking his seat. “You got her out when you could, Reid.”

          Ducking his head, he pursed his lips slightly before raising his coffee cup to his face. He wanted to tell them more about why Alice was so secretive, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell them. It wasn’t as if her ability to see the dead was relevant to finding her or the person who took her. His spine went rigid when Prentiss spoke up, “The few classmates that recognized her had some interesting things to say. She had a tendency to talk to herself, as if she was having conversations with someone no one else could see. I’d shrug it off if it had been just one or two, but there were at least six that mentioned it. And one of the girls she worked with at the diner mentioned that she’d caught Alice talking to no one when she back into the cold storage behind the kitchen. It wasn’t just normal muttering either; I asked.”

          “Her roommate said something similar,” Morgan added. “Told me that she was a sweet girl, but odd. She stayed to herself but sometimes he could overhear her talking to someone in her bedroom. They don’t have any pets and he wasn’t positive that she’d been talking on the phone. She had really bad nightmares sometimes, but looking at her childhood, that’s no surprise.”

          “There’s no record of any kind of psychiatric care,” JJ chimed in, blue eyes scanning down the screen in front of Garcia as the other woman typed and scrolled.

          “Reid? I know you want to protect her, but we need to know everything. Does Alice have a history of mental instability?” Hotch fixed his youngest agent with a stern look, taking in the defensive posture and the way his long fingers tightened around his mug as if it was the only thing keeping him from bolting. When the young man didn’t answer, he pushed, “Could she have had a psychotic break and wandered off?”

          “No. She doesn’t have a mental disorder.” Spencer’s words were clipped, putting a lie to his words. He was hiding something. “I would know.”

          “Then what is it? You wouldn’t be this defensive if it wasn’t a possibility. If she wandered off then we need to look in a different direction, Reid. Step back and look at this like a profiler, not a friend.”

          “She’s not…” Spencer stood up abruptly and went toward the door. He stopped just before stepping out, “She didn’t just wander off. I know what mental illness looks like, and she wasn’t… she isn’t…” His voice broke and he bolted, not bothering to close the door behind him.

          Everyone was silent in his wake, exchanging meaningful glances. “I’ll go after him,” Rossi volunteered, standing up. “I think maybe we should start looking at the homeless shelters and asking around on the streets.”

*~*~*


	4. Chapter 4

 

*~*~*

          The next time she woke up, she was naked and in a warm bath and there were strange hands running along her shoulder and down her arm. Alice blinked up at the soft light, her eyes a little more focused than they had been before, but not much. The pain in her head was a little better, but her stomach was still upset and little flecks of light kept floating in and out of her vision. Her arms and legs were still numb. No, not numb… she could feel the warmth of the water and the gentle drag of the soapy cloth as it made the descent to her fingers. She just couldn’t move.

          “Hey,” the man from earlier spoke to her again, his voice just as warm as the bathwater. Tender and loving, he sounded pleased that she was awake. She noted that the gag was still in her mouth and she was very thirsty. The corners of her lips hurt from where the cloth had rubbed at the flesh. His large, callused hands pulled her forward so that he could wash her back. Her head fell forward, her chin hitting the very top of her collarbone. She grunted from the pain of it, her breath hitching momentarily.

          “Sorry, baby.” His apology was sincere and he gently straightened her head so that it was hanging back instead of forward. “I forgot that I had to give you that medicine that makes you sleepy. Let’s get you rinsed off and dry, then I can tuck you back into bed.”

          Alice screwed her eyes shut again, humiliation burning her cheeks. He was nearing the end of the bathing, which meant that he’d already touched her in other places, more private places that she didn’t want _anyone_ to see or touch. His hand caressed a scar on her back and she could feel his fingers tremble. His voice was tight when he continued speaking, “I won’t let anyone else hurt you, sweetheart. I knew that you were special when I saw you, when I saw how you blended in without making any sound. I saw you move among them, but never of them. I saw you talk to the _others_ , to the dark ones. I can see them too, but they don’t talk to me.”

          A sob made her shoulders shake and she wanted to pull away from him, to push and scream and flail about. She wanted to strike at him, to claw at his face and his hands. She wanted to sink into the water and let it take her. But she couldn’t do any of it. She was trapped inside her body, unable to move, unable to do anything but feel. He rinsed her off, running his hands over the skin of her back to make sure all the soap was gone.

          He continued the narrative as he pulled the plug on the drain. Alice didn’t look at him; she kept her eyes closed. She still had no idea what he looked like. Old, young, handsome, ugly, blonde hair or brown. She knew what his body felt like, and she knew that he had large hands. They were broad and thick, his fingers easily twice the size of her own. Spencer’s hands were large too, his grip surprisingly wide. But Spencer’s hands were smooth and cool and elegant. They moved with a grace that people often mistook for delicate.

          She started to shiver when he stood up to get the waiting towel. He wrapped her in the thick cloth while she was still sitting in the tub, lifting her out easily as if she didn’t weigh anything. Spencer had carried her a few times when they were kids, when her stepdad had broken her leg and she’d had trouble using the crutches. He’d carried her a couple times when they were grown up too, when she fell asleep on the couch and he moved her into his bed. He had moved her to the bed, then slept on the couch. In the morning, she hadn’t remembered being carried. She wished that she could have been awake for it, and that he’d slept next to her instead of on the couch.

          “I knew you were special,” the man repeated after he’d carried her into another room. Alice still refused to open her eyes. She didn’t want to see where she was. Seeing it would make it more real and less of a fucked up dream. If she didn’t look, then it wasn’t happening. Her shivering turned to full out shudders as she was laid down on a cold bed, the cool air ghosting across her damp skin. Another towel, this one warmed, was drawn over her to dry her off.

          “You know what it’s like to suffer,” he whispered and stroked her hair again, running through the freshly washed strands. “I knew that someone had hurt you. I saw it in your eyes, in the way that you didn’t let anyone close. But I didn’t know that someone had… I didn’t know.” There was a hesitation in his voice, an inability to say the words to describe the scars he’d found. There was a horror that made Alice turn her head to the side in shame.

          “Shhh,” he whispered and she felt him lean over her, the warmth of him soaking into her chilled flesh and the smell of cinnamon flooding her nose. He kissed her cheek, above the cloth gag. Then he moved her face back toward him and pressed his mouth to hers. She whimpered and tried to flinch, but couldn’t. “I have you now, baby. I won’t let anyone else touch you. You’re safe now.”

          He seemed to notice how cold she was then and immediately left her for a couple minutes that seemed like an eternity. When he came back, he pulled a soft, long sleeved nightshirt over her head. He maneuvered her like a doll, dressing her easily. When he slid his hand under her naked backside to draw the material under her, she heard his breath quicken just a little. She felt like she wanted to be sick. _Don’t open your eyes. Don’t open your eyes. Don’t open your eyes. It’s not real if you don’t look. Oh, God._ She wondered if Spencer was looking for her. If anyone was, it would be him.

*~*~*

          “Care to share what you’re trying to keep back, kiddo?”

          Spencer’s hands faltered in their task of stirring the sugar into his coffee. He didn’t want to look at Rossi, but the other man had invaded the small kitchen area and leaned against the counter right next to him. Dark eyes watched him closely and saw everything. “It’s her secret.”

          “But if that secret can help us find her faster, you need to tell it.”

          “It can’t help us find her.” Spencer abandoned the spoon and cup, running his hand through his hair. His eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue and upset as he looked his senior agent in the eye pleadingly. “Can you just take my word for it that she’s not mentally ill? Please? I think I’ve earned that trust.”        

          “I think you have that backward, Reid. I think you need to trust _us_ to help you. We can’t do that unless you’re willing to be completely upfront. Even if it isn’t mental illness, there is something going on that could change the direction we’re looking in. We might not be doing this right. We could save a lot of time and effort if we knew the entire story.”

          Spencer was silent for several minutes and Rossi could almost see the wheels turning faster and faster. For a moment, he thought he might have to say or do something to stop the rotation before it actually hurt the other man.

          “Do you believe in mediums,” came the surprising question. Rossi looked at him and blinked. “And yes, I did just ask you that, and yes, it is pertinent.”

          Oh, God, he was going to go all proper English. “Mediums as in people who can communicate with the dead?”

          “Yes. It became more or less common in the nineteen hundreds as the spiritualism movement became…” Spencer cut himself off abruptly, “But Alice doesn’t follow any of the Victorian parlor tricks. She doesn’t do séances, she doesn’t knock on tables, and she doesn’t go into trances. She can see them and talk to them as if they’re alive.”

          Rossi was a bit perturbed by the fact that Reid had stopped his own rant, maybe more than the fact that the level headed, self-proclaimed agnostic-almost atheist had said that his friend talked to the dead. “Wait a minute. You’re saying this like you really believe it.”

          “It’s because I _do_ really believe it. See? This is why I didn’t want to say anything. You push me for answers, then you don’t want to listen.” Spencer turned on his heel to walk away, frustrated and angry. He was exhausted and scared and he couldn’t close his eyes without imagining two hundred different ways his best friend could be dying, each one more painful and horrible than the last.

          “Reid, wait.” Spencer jerked his arm out of Rossi’s grip, but stopped to glare back at him. “I’m sorry. Come here and sit down with me and explain what Alice does and how she does it. And why you believe her. I don’t understand it, so explain it to me.”

          It took a minute, but Spencer finally followed him up the stairs to his office.

          “The first time I caught her talking to someone, I was nine and she was seven. This was two years after her stepfather threw her into a wall hard enough to literally break her skull. Thankfully there hadn't been any permanent damage, but she still gets migraines and motion sick really easy. We were playing on the swings at the park when she stopped her swing and looked over toward the monkey bars. All of a sudden she looked scared. There were a few other kids playing, but there wasn’t anyone over in that direction; we were the only ones in that play area.”

          Rossi kept quiet and watched Reid’s body language. The kid had his ankle crossed up over his knee, his foot bouncing nervously. His hands were folded in his lap, fingers fidgeting with each other. He kept eye contact, however, and his expression was similar to how he looked when he was trying to be as articulate in his recitations as possible. He didn’t show any signs of deception.

          Spencer went very still when he was lying. He evened his breathing and his motions, becoming eerily graceful and fluid. He worked just the opposite as most people did when they weren’t telling the truth. This restless movement was purely him.

          “She shook her head ‘no’ and said that she didn’t want to. I thought she was talking to me and I said that it was okay, that we didn’t have to swing anymore. Alice didn’t listen to me, she didn’t even look at me. She stared over at the monkey bars and said, ‘I don’t have to. Go away, you’re not real.’ She scared me. At that point my mother was just starting to show signs of her schizophrenia. I immediately thought that my best friend was starting to catch it, even though I’d done all my homework on the disease and knew intellectually that it wasn’t contagious.”

          Rossi felt a pang for the child that his colleague had been. Young and frightened with one sick parent and one that was slowly but surely distancing and without any sort of support system. It was no wonder that he was so socially awkward. But the kid had done well for himself. More than well.

          “I got off my swing and blocked her view of the monkey bars. She looked so scared when she looked at me that I got scared too, and it wasn’t the kind of scared that you feel when you think someone’s hurt or sick. It was the kind of scared when you think someone’s going to come after you. She grabbed my hand and started running. We didn’t stop until we got back to my house. After we could breathe again, I demanded that she tell me what just happened. I was kinda mad, but I got over it when she started crying.”

          “Alice doesn’t cry unless she’s extremely upset. It was ingrained into her when dealing with her parents- she always thinks that people are going to be angry if they see tears. Even though logically she knows that’s not the truth of it, she still...” Spencer cleared his throat and glanced down, then back up. “Anyway, she told me that I couldn’t tell anyone, but there was a man that had died there on the playground. He was scary and old and he had a hole in his chest. He’d told her to come over, that he wanted to show her something. His face had changed into something really horrible and he’d started to come toward us when I stepped in between them.”

          “And you did the research on murders in that park.” Rossi could see where this was going.

          “I did. In nineteen fifty three, there was a man in his late fifties that was shot in the chest by the father of a little girl that he had allegedly molested. That was the first time it ever happened with me there. There have been more through the years and sometimes I’ll do the research just to let her know that she’s not insane and just hearing voices. _That’s_ why she’s gotten really good at avoiding harassment and avoiding attention.”

          The older profiler allowed the information to sink in, to let it roll around a few minutes. It wasn’t even close to being the most far-fetched thing he’d ever heard or believed, and it did explain a lot of the reports on the girl’s strange behavior. But what sold him on it was Reid’s unwavering belief. He was logical to the point of fault, always able to figure out how the trick was done. He didn’t believe in a lot of metaphysical stuff, and he was vocal about that lack of belief. Rossi sighed and said, “I believe you. Now we have to explain it to the others and hope they’re as open minded as I am.”

*~*~*


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry so short! Lol had a busy day, but the storyline's progressing. :D Thanks for reading!

 

*~*~*   

          With Rossi backing him up, Spencer got through telling the rest of the team about Alice’s ability and was shocked beyond belief that there wasn’t more disbelief and heckling. Garcia, of course, believed him immediately. Her face had lit up with excitement before she saw the defeated lines of Spencer’s face. “I knew someone once that was a palm reader that worked the ren-faire circuits, she was scary accurate.”

          “Alice isn’t a psychic, Garcia,” Spencer snapped, looking almost sick with guilt. “And until now, I was the only one that knew about her being able to see them. That’s why she doesn’t make any connections. She stays away from getting close to people. If she’s the odd girl that occasionally talks to herself, then she won’t be anything special. She doesn’t have to care if she sees people looking at her funny. None of it matters if she doesn’t let anyone in.”

          “I can’t say that I really believe that she can see the dead,” Morgan said carefully, leaning back in his chair. “But I’ll trust you on this. I think that we should cover all the bases anyway and look into the homeless shelters and churches. Even if she didn’t wander off, it’s still a good place to start. Maybe someone saw something suspicious.” Or maybe they would find her safe but confused. No one said it but they were all thinking it.

          “I’m not going to argue,” Spencer said finally. “I’ll take the area around the park and her apartments. Then I’ll take the bus route that she takes to work.”

          “I’ll go with you,” Morgan offered, looking to Hotch for confirmation.

          Their boss nodded, then said, “Prentiss and I will take the churches and shelters around your area, Reid. She might have gone back to wait for you at your apartment and didn’t make it.”

          “I’ll stay here with Garcia and keep going through records. I’ll get in contact with the local police to put in an official missing persons report. And I’ll call the hospitals to see if anyone fitting her description has been treated or admitted,” JJ offered, shooting a reassuring smile toward her friend. “We’ll do our best to find her, Spence.”

          “I know. Thank you. I keep thinking about what she might be going through. I keep seeing all the different ways… all the different kinds of unsubs that we deal with all the time. It makes me sick.”

          “Focus on looking for her,” JJ advised gently. “We’ll cover as much ground as we can and be persistent. This isn’t our normal procedure, there isn’t a list of victims or a pathology to follow. We don’t have anything to build on for a profile. But that’s what I’ll work with Garcia on while you guys hit the streets. If there’s anything, we’ll find it.”

          Spencer nodded and pushed himself to his feet, looking exhausted and ready to drop. No one mentioned going home to rest even though it was on the tip of their tongues. Hotch shot a meaningful glance at Morgan before the other profiler followed his friend out the door. Morgan nodded his understanding. Stick close to his partner and make sure he didn’t do anything stupid.

          “Hey, Pretty Boy, let’s hit the deli on the way out. I’m starving and I think you’ve lost five pounds since this thing all started.”

          Spencer’s voice filtered back to the others as they made their way to the elevator. “I haven’t had much of an appetite.”

*~*~*

          There was a body curled up around her when she woke up the next time. The heat of it soaked into her, making her feel warm for the first time in a very long time. The bed was cozy and smelled of freshly washed linen and for a moment she could pretend that she was at home and everything was okay. She could pretend for a second that it was Spencer spooned against her back, and it was his hand that rested on the curve of her waist. But then he moved and it wasn’t Spencer.

          Too big, too warm, too hairy. The smell was wrong. It overwhelmed her, made her feel small and fragile in a way that Spencer never had. She always felt protected with her childhood friend; protected, but equal. Even at nearly a foot taller than she was, he never overwhelmed her. She tried to move and managed to inch her hand closer up to her face. It hurt all the way down to the bone.

          The man heard her sharp inhale and she felt his face rub against the back of her head. She could feel his breath against her scalp and his hand flattened against her stomach, running up her ribcage to touch her breast. Alice couldn’t help the alarmed sound that escaped and she realized that the cloth gag was gone. Slowly she worked her jaw, tears forming as the sore muscles shot pain down her face and into her neck.

          “Hush, darling, it’s all right,” he murmured against her ear, hot air ghosting across the sensitive area just under. Goosebumps erupted across her skin and she felt sick at the involuntary jolt of sexual awareness. Fingers slid over her nipple, which hardened under the unwelcome attention. Encouraged, he palmed the globe and squeezed gently, rubbing the broad part of his palm across it. She wanted to call out, to tell him to stop, but her voice wasn’t working. She willed her arms to move, for her legs to kick, or for her torso to jerk away and roll over… anything to make him stop touching her.

          Her body betrayed her in every possible way and she felt the burn of humiliation all over again and a familiar and sharp fear when she felt his erection against the back of her thighs. His hand left her breast and slid down the flat of her stomach to the juncture of her thighs and she tried to squeeze them together to keep him out, but they easily parted. Tears rolled out of her eyes as he touched her in places that no one else ever had.

          His quickening breath was harsh against her neck as he kissed her skin, his tongue tasting the salt of her sweat. Two digits slid into her most secret place and Alice turned her face into his arm that was under her head. It was too much. She had touched herself before, of course, but his fingers were so much bigger than hers. He stilled his movements and withdrew in surprise. “I’m your first,” he realized in awe. “No one else has ever had you.”

          Sex had required a closeness to another human being that she hadn’t been able to cultivate. The only person that had crossed her mind as a potential partner had been Spencer, and he was her friend. He was her best friend and until recently she hadn’t dared hope that he could ever want her like that. But now she didn’t... “Thank you,” the man whispered into her ear, rolling her over onto her back so that she was lying under him. She squeezed her eyes shut again, still not wanting to see his face. _If I don’t look, it’s not real. I can still wake up and this will all be a horrible nightmare._ "You saved yourself for me."

          “Shh, it’s okay,” he murmured against her cheek, his lips caressing her skin. “It’s okay, I understand you’re frightened.”

          She managed a pleading whisper, “Please.”

          “I want this to be special for you, I want you to be able to cry out and be free to express your pleasure.” Her stomach rolled and she tasted bile at the back of her throat. He mistook her trembling for desire and he stroked a hand across her face and through her hair. “It won’t be long, little one. I can wait until I can take you in the sunlight, until I can truly worship you.”

          _If I don’t look, it’s not real_. Tears rolled down her face and soaked her hair as he gathered her tight, pressing her against his chest.

*~*~*

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi :D First, thank you guys for reading this! And thank you to everyone who commented and left kudos, you totally made my day. Second, the drug I mention in this is technically only given through IV and used in hospitals due to how hardcore it is. I took some liberties and made it so that it can be taken orally and while not something to screw around with, it doesn't require a respirator. I hope it doesn't disappoint. :D

 

*~*~*

          “Hello, Father.” Spencer sat on the front steps of St. Michael's Catholic church three blocks from Alice’s apartment. It was late, nearing ten-thirty, and Morgan had dropped him off at his apartment almost four hours ago with orders to rest and eat something. As exhausted as he was, there was no way he could settle down to sleep. He’d waited a half hour to make sure his coworker was gone before he put his coat back on to walk the streets again.

          He found himself drawn to the grand old church on the corner where he had found his friend lurking more than once. She was about as religious as he was, which was not at all, but she had found the huge stone and glass building quiet and soothing. Even the old cemetery on the grounds had been silent, all of the dead long since moved on. No one bothered her here, dead or living. As Spencer had walked the gardens in the dim light of the old fashioned iron lamps, he tried to find some of the peace. Impossible without Alice there with him.

          After almost forty-five minutes, he had settled his long frame down on the front steps to stare out at the cold and emptying streets. Tears burned the back of his eyes and he felt the heavy weight of guilt settle even deeper into his chest. The footsteps of one of the priests had interrupted his bleak thoughts.

          “What brings you to our doorstep at this late hour, son?” The old man sat down next to him without an invite, arranging his heavy wool coat so that he was sitting on it instead of directly on the cold stone. “You look troubled.”

          Spencer held out the snapshot he’d been carrying around, a picture of Alice sitting across from him at their favorite diner. She was smirking, mouth slightly open to respond to something he’d said, and her eyes shone in the dim overhead light. He remembered their entire conversation, word for word. She hadn’t been happy that he’d taken the picture, never really comfortable with cameras of any kind. He had lied when he told her he deleted it. “Have you seen this woman around here recently?”

          Rheumy eyes scanned the picture, taking in the pretty features and unusual eyes. “I have seen her before, but not within the last two weeks. She walks our gardens a lot, looking a bit lost. Whenever I attempted conversation, she was friendly but quickly found a reason to leave. After a couple tries, I just let her be.”

          Spencer took the picture back and caressed it with a finger. “Her name is Alice Butler, and she’s been missing three days and five hours as of twenty minutes ago. I don’t know where she is or what happened.”

          “You care for her.” The words were gentle. “I’ve seen you here with her too, now that I think of it.”

          Spencer was quiet. “I will light a prayer candle for her, son, and if you can give me a copy of that photo, I can ask the rest of the clergy and our congregation if they have seen her.”

          “Thank you, any help will be welcome,” Spencer said automatically. He rummaged in his satchel and pulled out a small stack of the flyers Garcia had made up. “This has all of the information, and the numbers to call if anyone can help.”

          “I will make sure this is seen, Spencer.”

          The young profiler was a little surprised that the priest knew his name and he looked at him sharply. The priest’s smile was gentle as he explained, “I overheard you and your Alice talking. I’m Father O’Neil.”

          Spencer nodded, suddenly almost overwhelmingly tired. “Thank you,” he repeated, then stood up slowly. “I- The chances of finding her alive drop significantly every hour we don’t find her. Logically, I know that I shouldn’t…” His voice broke and he looked away briefly as he tried to reign in his emotions. The specific numbers were right on the tip of his tongue, the rant building in a flood of useless information that no one cared about, not even him. He swallowed it back and closed his eyes against the frustrated pain.

          “I know I shouldn’t hold out hope that she’s okay. I should just accept that the longer it takes to find her, the more likely it’s going to turn into a body retrieval instead of a rescue.”

          A gnarled hand rested on his shoulder and Spencer barely curbed the urge to flinch away. He hated casual touch on good days and as raw as he’d been feeling since Alice disappeared, it had turned nearly unbearable. “You keep holding onto that hope, young man. Sometimes, that is the only thing that keeps our loved ones hanging on. Don’t give up on her. You will find your Alice.”

*~*~*

          When Alice drifted back into wakefulness, her captor was gone and she was able to move a little more than she had previously. Her legs were moving and her hands could close into a fist. Her muscles ached and her joints felt as if they had been pulled apart and put back together. Head pounding, she stared up at the dark wood beams that made up the ceiling and slowly took inventory of her body. She could hear the fire crackling in the wood stove in the corner, and she was marginally grateful that it was warm enough in the large space. Her skin felt tight and itchy, and her eyes felt puffy, her tongue heavy. 

          After a couple minutes, she gathered what strength she had to roll herself out of the bed. Biting at her lip hard enough to draw blood at the sudden but not unexpected pain of hitting the hard cement floor, Alice couldn't to do anything but lie there, barely breathing as the agony seemed to reverberate into her bones, then back out. She sobbed at the sound of heavy footsteps on the wooden steps coming down. Weakly trying to move her hands to maybe pull herself under the bed to hide, a surge of self-hatred made her want to cry out. Why couldn’t she fight this!? She wasn’t weak! She wasn’t… this wasn’t her. She was trapped in someone else’s body, someone else’s weak, pathetic body.

          “Oh, honey.” His voice was warm and smooth, like velvet as he squatted down next to her. “I shouldn’t have left you for so long. Let’s get you back up into bed.”

          “No,” she protested faintly, her voice a little more than a whisper. “P-please.”

          “It’s all right, little one,” he soothed and his hands were oh-so-gentle as he picked her up. She felt limp, like a marionette that had her strings cut. A little ballerina puppet that had failed at her recital. “You must need the bathroom. Let me help you, then I’ll get you some more medicine. It’ll be any day now. The hospice nurse says that mother is hanging on, that’s she’s trying to linger as long as she can. But they upped the morphine and it’s only a matter of time before she fades.”

          As he spoke to her tenderly, he carried her to the small bathroom off to the side. Face burning, she had no choice but let him support her as she used the toilet, then clean her up. She hadn’t been able to keep her eyes closed this time, but she kept her gaze away from his face. She still didn’t want to see what he looked like. Alice didn’t want to personalize him. Right now he was faceless, nameless- he was a body and hands and voice.

          When he carried her back to the bed, she stiffened and tried to resist his manipulation of her limbs. He was still so much stronger than her, and she was so very tired, and it _hurt_. “I brought you down some soup. I know the medicine isn’t that easy on your stomach, so I want to keep away from the heavy foods.”

          She shook her head and spoke with halting, difficult words, “I… m… not hungry.”

          “Shh,” he repeated and pressed a kiss to the side of her head. “I know. But you need to eat.” He set the tray across her lap, then picked up a glass of orange liquid off of the nightstand. He lifted it to her mouth and instructed, “Drink it all, love.”

          She tried to turn her face, but he gently took her chin in his hand to hold it still. She drank it, knowing that the alternative could and would be a lot worse. It tasted strange, like chemicals and something else that made her gag at the end, the rush of too much fluid nearly making it all come right back up. “I… can’t.”

          “It’s all right, darling,” he soothed, making soft sounds as the drug moved through her system rapidly, making her feel hollow and numb. Slowly, what little control she’d regained over her body was gone and her head was too heavy to hold up. She was awake and completely aware, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but scream in her head as he moved her to his liking.

          “Would you like for me to read to you a while?” The question was asked and she felt more tears fall unchecked down her face. _No! I want to go home! I don’t… Please, someone help me._ He left her long enough to move the tray to the side and pick up a book off of the shelf, the soup forgotten for the moment. He wanted to give her time to digest the juice. He didn’t want her to be sick.

          When he came back, he climbed into the bed next to her and pulled her against his chest, moving her so that she was half-lying on him. Her cheek and ear was pressed against him and she could feel the deep rumble of his voice as he started reading.

*~*~*

          “I found it.” Garcia’s eyes scanned the screen in front of her rapidly, triumphant color blossoming on her cheeks. JJ looked at her, hope lighting up her face momentarily. “I found the trail. I found the trail of victims. It wasn’t easy, I tell you, because they’re all over the map.”

          “What do you have?” JJ moved behind their analyst, looking at the pictures and stats of four girls as they showed up on two of the bigger monitors, each screen split with two serious, but pretty faces. All of them were under five feet tall, slim build, hair color ranging from red to strawberry blonde. Ages ranged from nineteen to twenty-three. Their backgrounds were pretty similar. Girls two and four were runaways, one was legally emancipated at the age of fifteen, and number three had been in and out of foster homes until she’d turned eighteen and had escaped the system. All of them had been reported as a missing person, then found less than a week later.

          Other than an eerie resemblance to Spencer’s girl, they had one more important thing in common.

*~*~*        

          “Suxamethonium Chloride.” Garcia said as JJ handed out the rapidly put together files. “That’s the big connection. Other than the obvious tie in with victim profile. I had to dig really deep for this one, babes. Four so far, all of them from completely different states. California. Nebraska. Tennessee. And finally, Maine. I won’t wow you with the details of _how_ I found them and the connection, we all know I rock.”

          She flashed a tired but cocky grin at the room, and continued. “All of the girls had been found about a week after they were reported missing. Three died of cardiac arrest, and one died of drowning in her own vomit. Autopsies showed low doses of morphine mixed with a higher level of the drug Suxamethonium Chloride, which is really hard to say correctly. It’s-“

          “A drug used in conjunction with general anesthesia to induce muscle relaxation for endotracheal intubation, endoscopic examinations, and anything else that needs rapid and effective paralysis. It’s usually administered intravenously, but there are ways to dilute it enough to be taken orally.” Spencer rattled off the information automatically, then seemed to process the fact that he was speaking about a drug that could be working against Alice. His face whitened. “The informal name used by medical personnel is Sux. Side effects can be very severe; cardiac arrest, malignant hyperthermia, hypotension, sinus tachycardia-“

          “Reid,” Morgan tried to break into his horrified ramble of medical terms that no one else really understood. The words were tumbling out rapidly, getting more and more frantic. “Spencer! You need to breathe.”

           Hotch moved behind the other man’s chair and pulled it out, moved to the side and pushed down on his shoulders so that his head went firmly between his knees. He squatted down next to Spencer’s chair and instructed calmly, “Breathe. Take a breath in, Reid. That’s it. Now let it back out. Take a breath back in, slower.”

           Rossi came back into the conference room with a handkerchief soaked with cold water and placed it at the back of Spencer’s neck. “You’re okay, kid. One minute at a time.”

          “I know I’m okay.” There was still a note of panic to the young man’s tone, but it was greatly diminished and mixed with a sharp dose of anger. “That’s just it. I’m okay and Alice is under the effects of a fucking paralytic drug in the hands of someone who might be doing god knows what. Suxamethonium Chloride makes it impossible to move, you’re completely awake and aware, but you can’t do anything about it.” He raised his face to look at Hotch, who was still crouching down beside his chair. There were tears in his hazel eyes and the horror of his expression was enough to rend his unit chief speechless.

 

*~*~*


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! Thanks soooo much for the comments! Omg, it made me do a girl-squeal. :D I went back and did some editing on the last chapter, so it's a bit better now. *hugs* Happy reading!  
> Okay, note number two... All of the towns I mentioned in this are made up off the top of my head, I have no idea if they really exist or not.

 

 

*~*~*

          “The local police in Condon, California where Alyssa Matthews was found have very little. She was well known for being a runaway, so when she was reported missing, they didn’t take it very seriously. Her mother was a known pill-head, and her father had been arrested more than once for drunk and disorderly, assault, domestic violence, and drunk driving.” Prentiss looked disgusted as she looked over her notes from the phone call. “When she was found there was a mandatory autopsy, but they didn’t blink at the drugs in her system. Never mind that sux isn’t a street drug. They noted it, but latched onto the morphine as a reason to write her off as a routine drug overdose.”

          “Sandra Nicholson, Lincoln Nebraska. Same deal; history of being a runaway, single parent household with a drunk mother. She didn’t show up for her factory job and her boyfriend reported her missing after she’d been gone two days. He hadn’t even noticed she was gone until it was her payday.” Morgan echoed his partner’s disgust. “The police didn’t think it was odd that she had drugs in her system, looked at the morphine and said it was ‘Too bad that a pretty little thing like that had to go down that road.’ The boyfriend said that she was clean because they had to do random UAs at the factory and she couldn’t afford to lose her job.”

          The story was the same for Hannah Ames from Jackson, Tennessee and Melody Johnson from Alexander, Maine. Although Melody had been taking classes at the local community college and while incredibly shy, had a selective group of friends that had given Rossi a clearer picture of how hard it would have been for the young nineteen year old to go missing. It was a very small town with less than a thousand people. The girl had been an odd duck most of her life, but had been slowly making her way out of the trailer park on the wrong side of the tracks.

          “There’s one thing that sets Alice apart from the others,” Rossi said after he had relayed the information he’d gathered. “She wasn’t associated with questionable people. Melody Johnson was the last one taken before Alice, and she’d been the farthest away from her upbringing. She lived on her own and wasn’t associated with drugs or suspicious behavior. Her GPA was above average and she was working on getting her degree in criminal justice.”

          “He’s working his way up,” Morgan murmured, “The others didn’t make it, so he’s trying for isolated but ‘good’ girls with hard backgrounds. They survived their horrible childhoods and pulled themselves out. Melody was in the process, but Alice was ahead of her. The unsub sees them as fragile, as needing saved.”

          “And he makes sure he can take care of them,” Hotch said grimly. He had sent Reid to lay down in the break room, not giving him much of a choice. It had either been the break room or home. The genius was beyond exhausted and running on a tenuous mix of adrenaline, fear, and stubbornness. There had come a point where he’d been doing more harm than good and Hotch hadn’t been able to stand back any longer.

          The argument had been fierce but short lived. As usual, the unit chief had prevailed and Reid was currently passed out under the watchful gaze of JJ, who had taken over the large table with her laptop and stacks of paper to reference while she helped Garcia go through the lists of people that had access to the drug in all five states, looking for a common name.

          “We need to find her, fast,” Prentiss commented, “This drug is for short term use only. If our unsub is using it to keep them docile for long periods of time, it gets more likely that something permanent will happen. A person builds up an immunity to it after a while, which means he’ll start giving her more and more.”

          “You wanna make another canvas of the hospitals? We can take the list Garcia’s already pulled up for the local hospitals and do interviews.”

          “We have the profile in place, so we actually have something to go on,” Rossi murmured. “I’ll take a look at hospice programs.”

          White male, age range from late twenties to early thirties, medical professional with access to large quantities of emergency drugs and equipment. Most likely has at least one family member that is elderly or terminally ill and is relatively new to the area, probably moved here within the last two years. Most likely lives in a house with a basement or property with outbuildings.

          “I can almost taste it, we’re so close,” Morgan said, slapping the folder in front of him closed.

          “Let’s just hope that we’re not too late.”

*~*~*

          Her throat felt swollen and her mouth was so dry that she wanted to cough, but didn’t have the strength. Her chest was heavy, lungs feeling full. Breathing was harder than it should have been. She could feel her heart struggling to beat in her chest. _Thump… thump… … thump…_ It skipped beats, then beat twice to make up for it. She could hear it in her ears, a rush of sound that kind of reminded her of the ocean.

          Spencer had taken her to the ocean for her birthday last year. They’d rented a car and driven to Virginia Beach for the weekend and stayed in a cottage near the water. He hadn’t let her know how much he’d paid for it, and for once, she hadn’t argued. It had been one of the most peaceful weekends she could remember. She could feel the sand under her bare feet, the cold water lapping at her ankles. She’d carried a metal bucket that Spencer had given her when he told her what her present was. She had filled it with seashells and rocks that she had glued together on a giant piece of driftwood that she’d also drug up from the beach. It was hanging in the bathroom of her apartment, over the shower.

          They had fallen asleep on the porch swing, Alice curled up nearly in Spencer’s lap, awareness trickling in that her best friend smelled really good and he’d always felt so right when he touched her when everyone else always felt so wrong.

          Alice focused on that now, as she stared up at the ceiling and waited to die.

          It was going to happen, she could see the darkness edging in, feel the cold of the black reaching out to take her. It was just like she remembered it from the first time, when her stepdad had thrown her too hard and she’d hit her head. This didn’t hurt as bad. Now, at least. A while ago, it had hurt a lot, her body burning with the ache. Now, it was just a throbbing cold that was too deep for shivers. The man had been gone for a while, having heard a crash from upstairs. Apparently there had been a problem with his mother. Alice hoped that the woman had finally eased out of this life and into the next. Like Alice was ready to.

          _“You can’t go yet.”_ The face peering down at Alice was pretty, a heart-shaped pale globe with a smattering of freckles across her nose. Green eyes peered down at her, different from the usual hollow black. _“You have to hold on, Alice. He’s going to be here soon, and then you can go home.”_

          _But I can’t. I’m so tired._

          _“You can. You’re stronger than I was. Just a little while longer.”_ The girl touched her chest with her luminescent hands and Alice jerked at the electric jolt that went straight to her core.

          “Don’t worry, Alice.” A cold hand stroked her face and Alice found she could blink and turn her head. The young man sitting on the bed next to her looked remarkably like Spencer, only his eyes were endless, starry black. He didn’t sound like her friend, either. His voice echoed like soft brass bells, and the comparison calmed her. It reminded her of St. Michael’s and the gardens. “I’m not here for you, love.”

          She felt cheated all of a sudden, the pain of rejection cutting deep. This was the second time Death had touched her without taking her. _Why can’t you take me? Please, I don’t want to do this anymore. Take me with you._

          “It’s not your time.” He stroked her hair and she closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them he was gone and her chest felt lighter and it was a little easier to breathe. The girl sat cross-legged on the bed next to her, one insubstantial hand resting on Alice’s.

*~*~*

          “We’ve got a name,” Garcia all but shouted into her headset. “Gavin Mitchell. 889 Salina Drive, Quantico.”

*~*~*

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D Omg, thank you guys so much for the comments! I. Love. You. That said, warnings for angst and sap in this chapter. I hope I didn't disappoint.

*~*~*

          The house was small and unassuming, more of a brick cottage on the outskirts of the city in a nice neighborhood at the end of a dead end street. It was in good repair, the front gardens filled with hardy plants that had been specifically chosen for the harsh winter, summer plants cut back for the hibernation period. There was a newer black Prius parked in the driveway. It was the only vehicle. Spencer sat in the back of the SUV and stared at the house, feeling shaky and momentarily light headed. Alice was in there, he knew it. They all knew it. This was the guy. He stepped out and adjusted his vest, his service revolver in his shaking hand. What were they going to find in there? What if she was already dead? What if in his panic, the man killed her before they could… What if…?

          “You don’t have to go in there, Reid.” Spencer didn’t look at his boss. He focused on making sure his radio was working. Hotch touched his shoulder and clarified, “I would rather you didn’t go in there.”

          “Please don’t make me stay out here,” Spencer said, his voice barely above a whisper. If he raised his voice, he’d be screaming, and he didn’t want that. Everything was boiling up inside and he didn’t know what he would do if he was forced to stay back when everyone else went in. He needed to be there when they found her. Whatever the outcome, he owed Alice that much. He locked eyes with Hotch and saw understanding in the dark depths.

          “All right,” Hotch said simply and squeezed his shoulder before letting go. “Morgan has point, and you follow. Whatever happens, Reid, you’re not alone and neither is Alice.”

          Throat tight, Spencer nodded and they moved apart. The team organized with the swat officers and swarmed the house. Morgan kicked the door in and they stepped inside.

*~*~*

          Her eyes were too heavy to keep open and for once, she fought their closing. She was so tired, the exhaustion pulled at her but she didn’t want to fall. Melody’s cold hand was stroking her hair now, the dead girl keeping up a running commentary to keep Alice from slipping away. Her story had made Alice ache, her soul hurting for the promise that had been ripped away. Her heart struggled to keep beating, the abused muscle tired and ready to give into the drug that had it in its clutches. Her lungs had all but stopped, only shallow breaths allowed. The man had been gone for a long time, and she wondered if he was ever coming back. She hoped he didn’t.

          She was suffocating and it was one of the most terrifying things she’d ever experienced. _Please, Melody, let me go. I’m scared, I want to let go._

          _“He’s here, Alice! Spencer’s coming to get you, honey, it’s only a little longer.”_ Alice couldn’t believe her. False hope was another way to keep her holding on, and she didn’t trust it.

          Then he was there, kneeling next to her on the bed, his familiar, shaking hands feeling at her neck. He was shouting over his shoulder and she was overwhelmed, unable to process any of what he was saying. He spoke to her, his voice falling around her like a caress. She wondered if she was just imagining it, if it was one last beautiful lie before she slipped into the void.

           “Alice, hang on, please,” his words were thick, and she tried to tell him that it was okay. Everything was okay now that he was here. Her throat was closed and she couldn’t say anything. It was the cruelest of moments, believing that she was actually going to be going home. She felt her heart seize painfully, once, then stop.

*~*~*

          Gavin Mitchell had been overpowered almost too easily, the broad man throwing his hands in the air the moment Morgan barked the order out. “Where is she,” Spencer demanded, eyes taking in the entire living area in one go, cataloguing and memorizing everything. He didn’t wait for an answer, instead using his knowledge of architecture to immediately go into the kitchen and to the door leading down to the basement.

          Ignoring the shouts behind him, he rushed down into the small converted space. It looked like a cozy little apartment; a wood stove in the corner for heating, nice rugs to cover the cement floor, a full bathroom and kitchen. A sofa and chairs were centered around a built in entertainment center with bookshelves on either side, and in the corner against one wall, was a queen sized bed with layers of blankets. He barely saw any of it.

          Replacing his firearm, he rushed the bed, reaching for Alice, who looked so small and fragile lying under the quilts. Her skin was cold and clammy and so pale there was a bluish cast, her lips nearing purple. His heart stopped as he immediately felt for a pulse, finding it thready and unsteady. Her breathing was too light and shallow, but it was there. He shouted over his shoulder for help, turning around to find Prentiss right next to him. “Pulse unsteady and faint. We’re losing her.”

         Alice’s eyes were wide and frightened as she looked at him, her mouth opening and closing as if she were trying to talk. “Alice, hang on, please,” he pleaded, tears thick in his throat. “Please, I need you.” Her eyes rolled back in her head and he could feel her pulse slip away under his fingers.

         Prentiss climbed up on the bed, straddling Alice’s upper thighs and started chest compressions. Falling into the old rhythm, Spencer pressed his mouth to Alice’s and used his own breath to keep hers steady until the EMTs took over. Time stopped. One, two, three, breathe. One, two, three, breathe. One, two, three… breathe. He barely registered the hands that pried him away, shrugging them off and nearly coming back with an elbow. A sharp command from Rossi snapped him out of it and he finally allowed them to pull him back.

          He watched in horror as they moved around her, fast and efficient. He forced himself to watch as they used the defibrillator paddles to try to restart her heart. They had pulled her nightshirt up and off in order to press them to her bare skin. He wanted to step in and cover her again, to save her that indignity. Hadn’t she already been through enough? After the second shock, there was a shout that they had a pulse. After that, it was a rush to get her hooked up to an IV line and onto the waiting stretcher.

          Hands guided Spencer out of the way and he jerked violently out of their grasp again, stepping back on his own, arms crossed over his midsection. He shut out everything except the girl on the stretcher. Everything hinged on getting her to the hospital. They’d found her, but she wasn’t all right. She was alive. She was still here with him, but how much had that bastard taken from her? How much would they be able to bring back?

          He followed them up the stairs and into the back of the ambulance, carefully keeping out of their way, but his eyes never left her.

*~*~*

          Once at the hospital, he tried to go back with her, but was stopped at the nurse’s station just inside the bay doors of the ER. He started to ignore the nurse and orderlies that stepped in, meaning to walk right past them. Morgan grabbed him and spun him around, wrapping his arms around the younger man in a tight embrace that served to block whatever defensive maneuvers Spencer might have tried. The kid wasn’t thinking straight, moving on pure instinct. It was something that all of them could understand and even respect. Of them all, Reid was the one that usually kept his cool. He was the one that stepped back and dealt with the horror quietly and more or less alone. He felt it deeply, but solitary. Seeing him like this was heartbreaking and they couldn’t let him break alone. Not this time.

          “I’ve got you, Reid,” Morgan murmured, holding on when Spencer pushed at him, trying to twist out of his grasp. “Alice is in good hands, kid. They’re working on her, they’ll fix her.”

          “Morgan, you don’t understand,” Spencer’s voice was muffled against Morgan’s neck as he finally gave in and wrapped his arms around his friend. His shoulders started to shake as he started to cry. “How long was she without proper oxygen? How long was she pumped full of that drug? If they save her life, I don’t know how much of Alice is going to be left.”

          “Don’t grieve for her before she’s gone,” Prentiss told him and in an uncharacteristic move, she slid behind Spencer and wrapped her arms around both of the boys. All three of them were still in their FBI vests and heavily armed, standing in the middle of the busy emergency room. Hotch and Rossi were nearby, watching solemnly as the three younger team members just stood there in a united crush. The nurses and doctors watched, but went about their necessary jobs. There was something comforting and soul-wrenching about seeing the federal agents comforting each other. It put a human face on the normally stoic profession. No one could really say whether that was a good thing or not.

*~*~*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BTW, I have very, very little medical knowledge. I think that the CPR procedures have changed since my last class about thirteen years ago, but I'm not sure. *shrug* I go off of the format that this is fanfic and it doesn't really have to be a hundred percent accurate. :) Thanks for reading, guys!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love you guys so very much! Thanks for the comments and the kudos! *hugs*

*~*~*

          He held her hand not covered in tape and needles, the fingers of his other hand stroking the soft skin of her wrist. She had lost weight while she was gone and she felt too fragile in his grip. When he opened his eyes his gaze roamed over her sleeping face, partially obscured by the ventilator tubes taped around her mouth and nose. Her heart was beating without help, but her lungs weren’t quite up to it yet. The doctor on duty had said that it was a miracle she had survived long enough for them to find her. _“Alice is a very strong young woman.”_ Yes, she was.

          Spencer closed his eyes again and rested his forehead against their joined hands. The tears welled up in his chest and his shoulders heaved as he tried to keep the emotional storm at bay. There was a possibility of nerve damage. She had been under the effects of suxamethonium chloride for several days with the doses increasing as her body built up a rapid tolerance. There had been test after test done, but until she woke up there was no telling for sure.

          Her brain chemistry was good, the toxins were being flushed from her body, and she was stable. The neurological scans had come back clean, but there was no telling exactly what changes had taken place in speech or cognition until she woke up. There was no telling what kind of muscle memory might have been destroyed. He prayed to whatever gods might listen that she would just wake up, open her eyes, and _look_ at him. As the emotions raged, Spencer wrapped one arm over Alice’s waist and cried into their hands. _Please, wake up._

*~*~*

          “He loves you.” Alice didn’t take her eyes off of her childhood friend. He was alone in her room, the others giving him a few desperately needed minutes by himself. She was impressed with how well they knew him, how they knew when they needed to stay close and when they needed to back away and give him time. She wondered if Spencer knew how much they cared about him.

          “I know.” She didn’t look at the other girl, but she felt Melody slide her arm around her back. She felt strangely normal, standing here with the dead girl in the thin area between life and death. Strangely calm. Strangely solid.

          “You can go back.” Melody stroked her arm from shoulder to elbow, the touch feeling very real.

          “I’m scared,” she whispered. What if she woke up and she couldn’t move? What if she had brain damage? What if she went back and was stuck in her body again, able to see and hear and smell but unable to move or speak? What if she didn’t remember anyone or anything and had to relearn it all over again? What if she didn’t recognize Spencer? That thought made her heart hurt.

          “It’s scary,” Melody agreed. “But I wish I’d had the choice to go back. We think that life is this thing that we go through because we don’t have anything else to do. It’s painful and weird and dark, and horrible. But it’s beautiful and exciting and brilliant all at the same time. He loves you, Allie, and he’s not going to go anywhere, no matter what happens when you wake up. You’re not going to be alone.”

          “Are you going to stay with me?” Alice didn’t care that she sounded like a child in that moment.

          “Of course. Didn’t you know, I’ve appointed myself your guardian. Spirit guide, or whatever. It’s a thing.”

          “What happens if I don’t go back?”

          “I can’t tell you that,” Melody said quietly.

          “All right,” Alice said finally, closing her eyes. “I’m ready.”

*~*~*

          It took a long time for her to fight her way through the black and into the gray haze. It hurt more than the dark, but she didn’t want to go back into the quiet. She could feel her body, the shell a little uncomfortable after being away for so long. The pain got worse the further she went, the ache so deep it seemed to radiate from her bones. Her head hurt, her brain pulsing inside the cage of bone and tissue. There was something in her mouth, snaking down her throat and into her chest. She pushed a little harder, settled a little deeper into her body and started choking.

*~*~*

          Spencer jolted awake and stood up when Alice jerked and started coughing, choking on the tubes in her throat. JJ, who had been quietly working on her laptop in a chair by the window, ran to shout for the nurse. They were ushered out of the way as a team of nurses and the doctor rushed in and swarmed the bed.

          He watched from the doorway as the doctor spoke gently to Alice and slowly removed the tape, easing the tubing out. He slumped back against the frame, his knees weak. It had been nearly seven days since they had brought her in, and he had only left for the necessities. The hospital staff had brought in a chair that folded down into a bed that wasn’t suited for his tall, lanky form. He hadn’t slept in it, instead resting his head against the bed beside Alice’s hip and his hand rarely leaving hers.

          The others had tried to get him to leave to eat or sleep, but it was a lost cause. Hotch had arranged for the team to be taken off rotation for a couple weeks to clear up some cold cases and do some random interviews. Everyone had been taking turns bringing their work to the hospital to keep an eye on him. Spencer didn’t argue after the first couple days, knowing that they weren’t going to listen. And even if he didn’t talk to them a lot, it was kind of nice to have his family close by.

          “She’s not awake yet, the choking was caused by her fighting with the tubing of the ventilator. It's a good thing, meaning that she's progressed enough to not need the assistance,” the doctor told them after they had resettled Alice with Spencer watching everything with sharp eyes and a body poised to rush in at any moment if it looked like they were hurting her or if she was in any real distress. After they had navigated the tubes out and away, one of the nurses moved to pull the curtain around her bed. JJ grabbed his arm to keep him back, and was relieved when they didn’t completely block his line of sight.

          She had seen a completely different side to her colleague since this entire thing had started. JJ used to think that she and Spencer were close, almost like siblings after all they’d been through together. They looked out for each other, hung out outside of the office. But she’d realized that there was a completely different side to her friend, a side that lay underneath his instinctual aversion to conflict. He was stronger than they gave him credit for. They- the team- had always seen him as more than what other people in their profession labeled him. They knew he wasn’t a soft, skinny little boy straight out of school and wet behind his ears with nothing to offer but an oversized brain and a swift, sharp tongue. He had proven himself to be more through the years they’d worked with him. He had earned their respect. But there was a part of all of them that still felt like they needed to coddle him a little, to protect him.

          The Spencer he’d shown them all was harder, sharper, and more dangerous than the Spencer that they’d known before Alice had been taken. They had respected him before, there was absolutely no disputing that. But some of the layers had peeled away to show the depths of raw human emotion that he usually hid behind facts and statistics and quick sleight of hand. He had talked about how Alice blended into her surroundings out of necessity and that he had envied her that ability. His own camouflage was just as good. He let people see and believe what they wanted so that they didn’t challenge him before he was ready. He defused the situations by being thirty steps ahead of his opponent.

          He rarely showed physical aggression, but he had nearly taken out three medical personnel over the course of two weeks, his body settling into instinctive patterns that were more Morgan’s speed than what they expected from him. Alice was important enough to Spencer that he had reversed to overprotective alpha male tendencies. JJ didn’t want to know what would happen if the young woman didn’t come out all right.

          “What can I do,” Spencer was asking now, “Besides talking to her, and keeping the atmosphere warm and welcoming. I brought some of her things from home, and the flowers are her favorite. I've been reading out of her favorite books...”

          He would have kept going if the doctor hadn’t stopped him with a tired but fond smile, “Dr. Reid, you’re doing everything you possibly can to help her. Alice will wake up when her body decides it’s safe. She’s breathing on her own now, and her other vitals are good. The brain scans came back clean, and her blood is clear of the poison.” All of this was information he already knew, but he didn't point that out.

          Spencer fell quiet and nodded. “I would suggest that you take a break, though, son,” the woman patted his arm gently. “I don’t mean to leave the hospital or anything drastic like that, but take a walk and get a bit of air. You’ve barely left her side since she came in. I promise that we’ll contact you immediately if she moves at all.”

          He opened his mouth to argue, already shaking his head, when he heard Hotch in the hall behind him. “He’ll take your advice, Doctor, and JJ will go with him to make sure he eats.”

          “Hotch-“

          “Are we going to have a disagreement?” Hotch raised his eyebrows and gave Spencer the ‘dad look’ that usually worked to curb any protests. He softened and added, “I’ll sit with Alice for a while and I promise I’ll keep a close eye on her.”

          If it was anyone else, Spencer would have told them where to stuff it and how. But if he wasn’t going to be watching Alice himself, he wanted it to be Hotch. Garcia would be a very close and surprising second; the tech was fierce when it came to protecting the people she cared about, but she was also a bright and comforting presence just in case Alice woke up and was confused. Spencer knew that if he was in a coma and was just waking up, she was the second person he’d want to see.

          He stared at the pale girl in the hospital bed for another long moment, then nodded and allowed JJ to pull him toward the elevators.

*~*~*


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very short, but very sweet. :D You guys have no idea how much I appreciate your comments and support. Hell, even seeing how many are reading this has given me a huge thrill. Thanks again and there will be another update tomorrow.

 

*~*~*

          Her fingers moved. She could move her fingers. Moving her fingers was a good thing, she decided groggily, but she didn’t know why. Stuck somewhere between the gray place and the over-bright, noisy, and all around too much of what was outside herself, she didn’t know if she _wanted_ to go past that last little bit. The gray was nice. It still hurt, but she was growing accustomed to it, becoming a little more immune as the time passed by.

          Focusing, she took stock of that pain now, acknowledging it as another good thing. Pain was better than not feeling anything at all. It was a tingling kind of pain instead of the deep, throbbing ache that she had felt when she’d first transitioned from the black to the dark gray. She didn’t know if tingling was better or not. It was like little volts of electricity going to all points of her body, from her head to her shoulders, going in a circuit to her fingertips, then back to her chest. It traveled from her chest to her stomach and hips, and she felt the muscles twitch there like they wanted her to move them too, like they were jealous of her fingers.

          The tingling sharpened when it hit her calves and she felt her face scrunch, and that was a sensation all to itself. The very low murmur of voices dropped away and it was silent in the brighter area just outside her eyelids. Her toes curled and cramped, _that_ pain not necessary and too sharp and awful. A sound escaped her, the vibrations sending off more electricity deeper into her chest cavity and ribcage. She coughed and it fucking _hurt_. What had she done? In the seconds before she heard his voice, she felt a stab of intense regret that she hadn’t listened to the little part of her that wanted to stay in the gray.

          But then she heard his voice and she couldn’t stop her eyes from slowly opening. _“Alice? Allie? Come on, baby, wake up. That’s it, Allie, please wake up.”_ He sounded so strange. He sounded upset. Why was he upset? She _hated_ it when he was upset enough for it to show on the outside. The inside hurt was bad enough. The outside hurt was so much worse.

          When her eyes cleared enough to see more than blurry shapes, she saw the red-rimmed golden hazel of Spencer’s eyes and knew that she’d made the right choice.

*~*~*

          “I love you.” The words were an emotional whisper against the top of her head. Alice squeezed her eyes shut tight and relished the feel of Spencer’s leanly muscled body stretched out on the hospital bed behind her. She had been awake from her coma for two days, five hours, fifteen minutes and counting according to the genius’s calculations, and this was the thirtieth time he’d said those exact same words. She didn’t think she'd ever get tired of hearing it. His scent curled through her senses, calming her racing heart and easing the fear that she was still locked in a more gentle form of dreaming.

          She was afraid to fall asleep, not wanting to wake up locked in her body again, unable to move or speak while a lunatic played house with a life-sized doll that happened to look and feel just like her. Spencer hadn’t left her even when it was obvious that she was going to be okay, making sure that he was in her line of sight or within touching distance at all times. Every time she woke up and couldn’t see him, there was a riot of panicked beeping from the heart monitor still hooked up to her chest.

          After she’d woken up the first time and the doctors had come in to do their poking and prodding and asking of stupid questions that she hadn’t really been able to answer, Spencer had held her as tight as he could without hurting her. She still hadn’t been completely with it, confused and muddled with too many things going on around her. There were people she didn’t recognize huddled around, their happy, relieved faces putting her a little at ease, but she didn’t know them. She knew Spencer, and that’s what was important. His tears had been incredibly real as they soaked into her neck. He had told her then that he loved her, that he’d loved her for so long that he didn’t know what it was like to _not_ love her. Alice still hadn’t been able to make her words work right to tell him… but she had clung to him with whatever she had, which hadn’t been much, but it had been enough.

          Now, though, it was the two of them in the dark hospital room and he was curled around her, his larger frame a warm and familiar comfort. His arm was around her waist, bending up to rest his hand underneath her chin and cheek while her arms and chest kept it trapped. Her words were still not as up to par as they could have been, her throat painful and scratchy from having the tubes in for so long, but the whispered answer was enough for both of them, “I love you too.”

*~*~*


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys again for the awesome support of this story! I might add that I'm thrilled to say that I actually completed a story! Huzzah! Never fear, lovely ones, I'm starting on a sequel as we speak. I couldn't just stop after this one, there's a lot more to go on the Spencer/Alice universe. That is, if you guys wanna read it ;) Lol, I really hope this doesn't disappoint.

*~*~*

Four Weeks Later

*~*~*

          “Spencer, I swear on all that is holy, if you don’t stop, I’m going to crush your toes on purpose.” Alice glared at him from her wheelchair as they waited outside in the garden area at the apartment he and his team had rented while she was still in the hospital. She’d given her okay on them moving in together, realizing that it was futile to argue for more than one valid reason. Her old roommate, as cool as he had been, hadn’t been able to hold onto her room because he couldn’t afford to swing the rent all by himself. Spencer had gathered her things for her and they were currently at his apartment still in boxes waiting to be brought over.

          She couldn’t go back to work yet, but with Spencer’s help, she was planning on continuing her classes from home. She only had about three months until she had her degree in her hands. She couldn’t navigate stairs yet; the nerve damage had been isolated to her legs and hands, something about the extremities being more susceptible to the effects of the drugs. Personally, Alice thought they were making stuff up as they went. The doctor had informed her when she was fully aware that she was one lucky young woman. No one else had ever been under the effects of that particular drug for as long as she had. So, they had nothing to reference when they told her what was ‘normal’ or ‘usual’.

          But then, she wasn’t feeling very charitable at the moment, stuck in a wheelchair until she could get the movement range back. She had feeling, which was good and bad. Good, because she wasn’t paralyzed. Bad, because it was like a near constant barrage of the pins and needles feeling you got when your flesh fell asleep. It was just worse when she put weight on her legs, sometimes hurting so badly she wanted to cry. Her hands weren’t as painful, thankfully. She could type and hold a pen for short periods of time, which the physical therapist she’d met with a week before had said would just improve the more they worked with it.

          Her best friend had shown her picture after picture of their apartment options, although she’d been a bit impatient after the fourth place she’d okayed and he’d decided not to go for because of one reason or another. He knew that she wasn’t picky and that she’d be perfectly content staying in the slightly rundown one bedroom place he had before- if it wasn’t for the stairs and unreliable elevator. It had been up to him to find the perfect place.

          He kissed her temple now, lips lingering just a little too long and making her smile. “I love you,” he whispered and she shoved at his shoulder playfully. “Even when you’re cranky.”

          “I love you too,” she murmured, but he caught the words. He hadn’t been able to stop saying it, scared that she was going to disappear out from in front of him again. She always said it back, still half-afraid that this was all in her head and she was going to wake up at any time. “Even when you’re hovering.”

          “So, you kids ready to go in and actually look at the place?” Rossi called from a few feet behind them and Alice jumped, surprised by the sudden noise of it. She maneuvered the chair around so she could look back at the senior agent and the other members of Spencer’s team that had piled out of the SUVs in the parking lot. In the weeks since she’d woken up in the hospital, the others had slowly become integrated into Alice’s very, very small bubble of trust. They were careful not to overwhelm her, keeping their presence down to one or two people at a time, but someone had always been there through it all.

          Alice shook her head and sighed, “Thank you guys for helping us move. I’m kind of useless for a while and as much as Spencer likes to pretend he can do everything himself, I know it’s a lot.”

          “Hey, doll-face, we’re glad to be helping.” Morgan’s grin was easy and warm as he came up the walk with the rest of them. Morgan and Garcia- Derek and Penelope, she reminded herself, had been the first that had broken through her wall of ‘I don’t know you, fuck off’. Penelope was easy with her genuine quirky happiness. Her expressive face and honest mind-to-mouth way of speaking had put her at ease immediately. When Alice had been forced to stay in the hospital for a week longer than the young woman had thought necessary, the tech had brought simple games and puzzles and stayed for hours to keep her occupied.

          And Derek had teased the hell out of Spencer in a good-natured, brotherly way. There had been a few moments where Alice hadn’t quite known how to react to it. There was a big part of her that was just as protective of Spencer as he was of her, especially against anyone who would purposefully embarrass him or hurt his feelings. However, she’d realized quickly that it was their way of minimizing and distracting themselves from the sometimes intense situations they found themselves in. Derek wasn’t mean-spirited in his teasing, and she was happy to see that Spencer gave as good as he got, his own sharp wit getting a good workout in their verbal sparring.

          JJ’s innate warmth and motherly aura made it easy for Alice to relax around her, helped by the obvious love and trust the blonde exuded when she was around their youngest profiler. She’d been the one to help Alice in the hospital shower, pushing everyone else out and not taking no for an answer when the younger woman tried to argue that she could do it by herself.

          Embarrassed and nearly sick with anxiety, she’d almost refused to go into the showers. Gentle insistence and even gentler hands had won out. As had sheer logic. Alice had been almost desperate to be clean, feeling horribly itchy and filthy despite the hand-baths she’d been forced to endure, but the thought of one of the nurses handling her just like _he_ had made her want to vomit. JJ had been the lesser of the three evils. The other woman had talked to her through the bathing process, telling her stories about her son, Henry. In her words, Alice had found another layer of her best friend that she hadn’t realized was there. He was wonderful with children though sometimes he could come across as being awkward and stilted. Fast and efficient, the shower had done more toward making her feel more like herself than anything else the doctors could have done.

          Aaron was everything she’d ever thought a real father would be like, and she knew that not everyone saw that when they looked at him. Alice had seen a part of him that most people who had worked with him every day for years had probably never even glimpsed. He’d been the only one to be able to force Spencer to leave her for longer than a brief bathroom break. The moment his subordinate was out of the room, he’d turned to Alice with a gentle smile and held out a deck of cards. “Now that the card-shark is out of the room, what do you say to a game?”

          While they had played a game of rummy, with Aaron helping her get her grip right on her cards with warm and patient hands, he had eased her into talking. There hadn’t been any rhyme or reason to it at first, just random comments. Like JJ, he talked about his son, the dark eyes lighting up when he spoke of the little one. It had progressed from Jack to Henry, then to Spencer. Then it had gone from Spencer into a gentle foray into what she’d gone through while she was in the care of the man who’d taken her. When her hands had lost their grip on the cards and they’d fallen, she’d cried.

          Knowing her aversion to touch, especially when she was crying, Aaron had talked to her in quiet tones and when she’d instinctively reached out, he’d moved to sit next to her on the bed and rubbed her back while she sobbed out the horror that had been building inside and she hadn’t wanted to show Spencer. He soaked up her words and her tears patiently without trying to soothe or tell her that everything was okay or that she was safe now. When it was all over, they’d sat there in exhausted silence and she wondered if she had ever been able to just _talk_ , to get the words out without any kind of retaliation or judgment or obligated words of comfort. With Spencer, she held back because she didn’t want to hurt him any more than he already was by what happened.

          Emily was a little more pragmatic and reserved than the others. Alice liked the times that she sat with her and Spencer. Compared to the thick affection and sometimes overwhelming _brightness_ of the others, Emily’s quiet, almost cool friendliness was refreshing. She’d told Alice about some of the cases they’d gone out on, some of the sillier anecdotes that involved their genius. Emily did regard Spencer as a good friend just the same as everyone else, in was just in her nature to be a little more distant.

          Then there was David, who was a lot like Aaron, only more like the cool uncle that took you out for your twenty-first birthday and systematically got you hammered while keeping out a sharp eye to make sure you didn’t do anything too stupid. Alice had heard more about what not to do when getting untangled from a clingy one night stand and avoiding jealous husbands than she’d ever wanted to. He had also informally adopted her, saying that Spencer was like one of his nephews that just happened to be an insufferable font of knowledge that spouted off randomly. And since Alice was stuck with Spencer, she was stuck with David.

          The entire experience had been strange and incredibly awkward for her at first and she absolutely _hated_ anyone seeing her at her weakest. But it had been important for Spencer to have their support whether he admitted it or not. And they’d all become important to her too, even if she had the niggling feeling that it could change at any time. That dark little voice at the back of her heart was very quiet but persistent. She ignored it and appreciated what she had in the moment.

          She had changed while she was gone, and that’s how Alice thought of it, as the time that she was just wasn’t there. She’d been under the care of a psychotic freak and made a prisoner of her own body for seven days, then in a coma for another seven. Four weeks didn’t sound like a lot of time, but when compared to how quickly things could disappear, it was almost an eternity. It was enough.

          “I can’t believe you haven’t been inside yet,” Penelope said, clapping her gloved hands together as she came up on Alice’s other side. She fished in her dark purple pea-coat and pulled out a pair of orange and black fingerless gloves. “Give me your hands, Sweet-pea.”

          Alice obligingly held out her hands and smiled as the blonde slipped the gloves over her icy hands. They were fuzzy and warm, but they had a very thin layer of rubber across the palm and fingers so that she had better grip on the wheels of her chair. “Now you have no excuse not to wear gloves on those fairy fingers.”

          “Thank you, Penny.” Her face warmed with pleasure and mild embarrassment, Alice laughed as the other woman handed her a small neon gift bag with four more pairs, two plain black, one black and red, and one red and green.

          “You’re welcome. Now what are we waiting for?”

          “Me,” Aaron said, coming up after everyone else, holding a tan file folder and two sets of keys. He smiled at the couple and handed Alice the folder and a set of keys to each of them. “I stopped at the manger’s office on my way down. They called me when they couldn’t get a hold of Spencer. There was an issue with the apartment that they showed you and they actually upgraded your unit.”

          “I guess that’s why there wasn’t anyone here to meet us,” Spencer said, his brow creasing. “I was wondering about that. It’s a little worrisome that they didn’t come down here anyway, they knew we were going to be here at nine.”

          “That would be my fault,” Aaron confessed easily. “When they called me, it was early and I figured that you two would like to see the new apartment without the manager hovering, so I told them I’d pick up the keys and welcoming packet for you.”

          “Now that we have the keys, what are we waiting for,” David said, then waved his hand toward the complex, which was a very nice six story brick building with working elevators, including a freight elevator in the back for moving big and awkward items, and a very clean and modern lobby with a discreet number pad off to the side. One of the reasons Spencer wanted this place was because of the security. As much as he hated having eyes on him, the security cameras were a boon just in case… He shoved those thoughts away and took control of Alice’s wheelchair, pushing it toward the main doors. He watched her hand shake as it pushed in the code and he bit back the urge to ask if JJ would take her back home with her until the moving was done, to make her rest while they did the work. He valued his skin, so he didn’t say it.

          Alice wasn’t used to being taken care of, and she didn’t like it. She didn’t realize that she didn’t need to do everything herself, and that it was okay to let someone else take the brunt of the load. She’d just gotten out of the hospital less than two weeks ago. Spencer watched as the others crowded into the elevator, all of them surrounding Alice out of necessity, but not crowding her. Garcia played with her hair, producing a yellow scrunchie to twist into the red-gold curls, which were doing their usual riot. It pulled the mess back and up into a cute and simple ponytail. “There, no more eye-pokage.”

          He watched his girl raise her face up with a grateful grin playing at the edges of her mouth. “Thanks, Penny. I have no idea where all my hair-ties went. They’re probably in the first box we packed and the last one we’ll unpack.”

          “I have a few I can spare,” Emily offered, “I keep a handful in my go-bag just in case.”

          “Thanks, I’ll take it.”

          The normal flow of conversation hit Spencer as they filed out into the wide hallway when the elevator dinged their floor. He felt a warmth in his chest at the relative ease with which they all moved together, Alice included. It was as if she had always been a part of _them_ instead of just a part of _him_. Eyes that were more green than gold in the light of their new apartment flashed over at him and he couldn’t stop himself from squatting down next to her in front of everyone. He cupped his hand behind her neck and head, and brought his lips to hers. Emotion stung his eyelids at the thought that this almost didn’t happen. If things had gone just a little different, he wouldn’t be starting this new chapter of their lives with her. If she hadn’t been so stubbornly strong, if he would have been a bit slower, or if his team hadn’t been so supportive and quick to believe him, he would be doing something else so completely different from this.

          When he pulled away, he touched their foreheads together and kept his eyes closed. “I’m here, Spencer,” Alice whispered simply and just let him hold on for a few more minutes. It wasn’t just the victims that suffered in the aftermath of something so horrible; the families and loved ones had their own very legitimate nightmares and paranoia about shadows coming up to snatch their loved ones away again.

          “I know,” he whispered back, then pressed another kiss to her forehead before pulling away. His eyes caressed her face, memorizing the slight flush in her cheeks and the dark sparkle in her eyes. He ran his thumb over her bottom lip and smiled when she did. “I love you.”

          And if he was becoming obsessive about telling her how much he loved her, that was all right. Alice wasn’t going to tire of hearing it anytime soon.

*~*~*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case anyone was wondering, I waited until the end to start writing the team using their first names to bring them in as being more familiar with Alice. At first, I didn't realize why I was only using Spencer's first name and not the others, but I think it works to symbolize Alice's integration to the team. *shrug* To be honest, I was going to go back and edit their first names in, but I found that I liked the end results. :D Anyway, thanks so much for reading!


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